Home
by w0lfermelon
Summary: Home is where the heart is, and your love lies bleeding.


**Title:**** Home**

**Summary:**_**The night sky was dark and peppered with stars like the freckles on Marco's cheeks as he gazed out of the window. He turned his head slightly, but Jean could still only see one half of his face.**_

_**"Hey," He asked. "Is it weird for you, being back in Trost after all this time?"**_

_**Because home is where the heart is, and your love lies bleeding.**_

**The fact that Jean is from Trost, and Marco dies in Trost, got me thinking. About what it must be like to have the love of your life die in your childhood home, and about the concept of home in general. So I tried writing something vaguely interesting and maybe artsy about it. Ooh, symbolism and metaphor.**

**Warnings:**** Canon typical gore/violence, canon character death, fluff, angst, sloppy makeouts.**

**This fic is also hosted on my archiveofourown account, under the penname Elvamire.**

The night sky was dark and peppered with stars like the freckles on Marco's cheeks as he gazed out of the window. There was a ring of violet light around the horizon, which bled into indigo and inky black as the light of the sun faded. The scenery outside was a puppet show of shadows, rolling and bumping with the motions of the carriage.

Marco turned his head slightly, but Jean could still only see one half of his face. "Hey," He asked. "Is it weird for you, being back here after all this time?"

"I don't think we're technically home yet." Jean said. The word slipped from his mouth without him thinking about it, and he was vaguely surprised to realize he still thought of Trost as his home. He'd been gone for years, and for so long 'home' had simply been wherever Marco was at the time. The bunkhouses the trainees slept in weren't home in the slightest, and sometimes Jean felt adrift without a place he could really say he lived in, but the dark-haired boy was his anchor out at sea.

"Don't avoid the question." Marco chided playfully. He sounded like Jean had before, like he didn't know whether to keep his voice lowered or not. They weren't alone in the carriage by any means, but they didn't know yet if this was the kind of conversation they would need to keep hushed if they wanted their relationship to stay a secret (and Jean did). Unlike the quiet sighs, groans and, 'I love you,'s whispered in their beds at night, which they knew they had to keep as silent as possible.

"Fine." Jean huffed, loud enough that Eren at the other end of the carriage glanced over with sharp eyes, and Marco had to hush Jean with a gesture until those ocean eyes looked away and Eren returned to his quiet conversation with Armin. Even if they didn't have to hide what they were talking about, there was something pleasant about the conspiratorial whispering. Besides, he suspected Jean liked the other trainees to think that he didn't actually have emotions.

"I still don't think we're in Trost yet," Jean continued. "But, it is going to be a bit weird. Being back." He looked past Marco, out at the passing landscape which brought them closer and closer to the city he'd been brought up in. Training had changed him, as expected, and he didn't feel like the boy who'd come from Trost anymore. He wasn't sure if it was the training itself that had changed him, though, or the moment when Marco gently touched the back of his neck as he walked past and Jean realized with sudden clarity that he was in love with him.

It was stranger still to realize that this would be the last time he ever saw Trost, probably. After this, he would take his ranking of sixth in the squad and go to the Inner District with Marco, where they would be truly safe.

"I mean, it's only been a couple of years since I was here last." Jean continued, struggling to keep his voice quiet- he was saying nothing untoward, but Marco was right in thinking he didn't want Jaegar listening in on what he was saying. "But it feels like a lot longer. I was still a kid the last time I was here."

Discreetly, Marco reached across and took Jean's hand. He continued to babble about the strange feeling returning to the city gave him while his thumb rubbed circles across his knuckles.

They were in Trost proper now, the lights in the streets allowing the boys in the carriage to look at the city buildings they passed. Jean couldn't decide what he wanted to look at more: the city he hadn't seen in years, of the wide-eyed look on Marco's face as he drank it in. It was a similar sort of look to the one he'd worn when Jean first voiced those three game-changing words, and he smiled to see it again. The knot that had been tightening in his stomach eased a little, and he allowed himself to look past Marco and at the buildings.

He didn't recognise the streets at all, but that didn't mean anything. He hadn't memorized all of Trost like the back of his hand, after all. He wondered how far they were from his house- he wondered, for a brief and feverish moment, if he'd be allowed to go home for a few hours before they left. He could introduce Marco to his parents. He wasn't ready yet to introduce him as the lover he actually was, of course, but a small part of him wanted to do it regardless. Marco was his home as much as Trost had ever been, and he felt like they should be linked closer together.

As the carriage rattled through the streets like Jean's thoughts through his head, Marco's hand never moved from his.

* * *

The rooms that the graduates were staying in had double beds, a small and simple thing to make them feel important for a night. Jean had taken a bath earlier, too, and even though the water had been lukewarm it had been his first bath since the night before he left home to join the military. It seemed almost special, like it represented something, his return to his home city being accompanied by something he hadn't known since he'd left it behind.

Even without a bed built for two, it wouldn't have been surprising when Marco found his way into it. The bed itself wasn't half as big a treat as the thick stone walls which meant they didn't have to keep quiet. Yet the bed was where Marco had ended up, splayed on his back and clutching at the straps of Jean's gear while the shorter of the two bit his neck. Sometimes he was tempted to comment on Jean's habit of obsessing over hickies like a teenager, because sometimes he forgot they _were_ just teenagers, soldiers or not.

They wrestled on the bed once Marco managed to dislodge Jean's teeth from his throat, rolling over and over each other and grabbing for the sheets as often as they did their clothes. It was Jean who used his voice when Marco had a chance to pin him against the sheets and kiss him hard, crying out while Marco expressed his pleasure in only sighs and groans.

He hit the mattress with a muffled thump as Jean pushed him down again. He'd had the hindsight to remove his manoeuvre gear before showing up unannounced in his boyfriend's room, so Jean showed no hesitation in tearing his shirt open with enough zeal to send one of the buttons flying across the room. His lips were on his before Marco could protest, biting hard enough to hurt.

Jean's mouth worked down Marco's body, his hands raking down his ribs to grip his hips tightly as he planted a kiss on every freckle he could find. Marco arched up off the bed despite the restraint, pressing his body into Jean's lips and panting. His belt had been undone during their previous tussle on the bed (a hybrid of kissing and fighting that was all their own) and the white uniform pants rode low on his hips, exposing tan skin and the place where the line of hair that ran down his stomach began expanding into a mass of dark curls.

Jean's teeth caught and tugged at that skin until Marco's hands tangled in his hair and tugged. With an uncharacteristic growl, he pulled his boyfriend back up to kiss him hard on the mouth; teeth clashing, tasting a hint of something like metal and salt. Marco's legs were around Jean's waist, hips moving rhythmically and conducting a symphony of sighs from the both of them.

He was ashamed and embarrassed of how long it took him to realise Jean was trying to fight free of his grip, even though it was only a matter of seconds. Jean rolled off him and onto his back, breathing hard. Sweat made the skin of his forehead shine, and there was a faint sliver of white visible where his eyelids didn't quite close all the way. He was still fully clothed but looked post-orgasmic anyway, and so beautiful that Marco had to kiss him again, just gently, just once.

"What's wrong?" Marco asked, mimicking Jean's pose as he lay beside him, their curled fingers not quite close enough to touch.

"I can't do this here." Jean replied, opening his eyes. For a moment, Marco was too distracted by the rise and fall of his chest, heaving in the dim light, to realise that Jean was looking out of the window. He followed his gaze, getting off the bed when he was sure he was able to stand and going to sit on the sill. Jean followed him, as always. He wasn't so brash when they were alone. There was an almost puppyish quality in the way he clung to Marco.

Marco had expected the city to be alive with lights, but it was far from it. Lanterns still glowed in the streets, but they were far from everywhere, and the darkness made everything seem more cramped and strange. Every building seemed the same.

Jean was holding his hand again.

"It felt too weird." He admitted. "Or it would have felt too weird, having sex with you in a building I used to see when I played in the street as a kid."

Marco wondered how Jean could even distinguish the streets at this level of light, but he supposed it was different for someone who'd grown up in Trost.

"I'm not sure I understand." Marco confessed. If he ever took Jean home, he wouldn't be able to wait to sleep with him in his childhood bed. He found the juxtaposition of the childhood he'd loved and the man he loved beautiful.

"I feel like Trost is sacred." Jean tried explaining, without missing a beat. His habit of speaking what was on his mind never went away, but his thoughts tended to be a lot more tender at this hour of the night, when it was just the two of them together. "Its home, it's where I grew up. Everything about it reminds me of being a kid, and I just can't mix that with sex."

"It's important to you, isn't it?"

"I wish it wasn't."

"Why?"

"Because I'm leaving it, and I don't want that to be hard." Jean rubbed his face with his free hand for a moment, sighing.

"You left it years ago." Marco pointed out gently.

"That was different, though. Training was only going to be temporary, it was never going to be a new home. But when we go to the Inner District, that _will_ be home. We'll have to make a home together, for ourselves. It's just... So final."

Marco blinked, tilting his head. The promise of living together had been unspoken so far, but it made him smile to hear it now. He'd had no idea the concept of _home_ was so important to Jean- he wondered what else there would be to discover, in all the years they'd have together.

Marco paused a moment, again glancing out at the streets before he turned to smile at Jean.

"You can see the whole city from up here." He was exaggerating, but still. "Show me somewhere you liked."

Jean's smile was as crooked as he was reluctant, but he began pointing out areas anyway. His movements were stiff and his comments stilted, at first, but as time went on he began to relax and talk at length about the streets which had sheltered him as he grew. He leaned into Marco's body, fitting against him like puzzle piece and resting his head on his shoulder as he talked the night away, completely confident that he was being listened to.

Trost was his home, and whatever life they would build inside Wall Sina wouldn't be able to replace the memories he had of growing up there. But there was another kind of home he'd come to recognise; it sat inside Marco's chest, and came from knowing he was loved. Home is where the heart is, and his was with Marco- the boy with the freckles was as much a home as Trost was to him. He made him feel safer and more secure than bricks and mortar ever would.

* * *

Later, when there are titans everywhere and the city is burning around them, when they grip hands and embrace, Jean cannot make Marco promise to come home safe.

Because for Jean, this _is_ home.

* * *

It was two days of smoke and ash, of confusion and fear. There were more bodies in Trost than there were bricks, and the boy Jean had trained with for two years was the very thing they were meant to be fighting. There were so many dead and missing, and Jean felt frighteningly alone. Without Marco, with the city in ruins, he had no home left.

His movements were methodical as he combed through the destroyed streets. He did his duty and his job, what he was sworn as a soldier to do. He hadn't thought about Marco's absence, because what was there to think about? He was Marco, and he would turn up. He couldn't not.

He did turn up.

The pain that tore through his chest was visceral and real, and suddenly every time he'd heard the phrase, 'a broken heart,' made perfect sense.

If he hadn't known him so well, he wouldn't have recognised him at all. His eyes were sunken and his face gaunt, and the dirt on his skin had covered the constellations of freckles that Jean had spent so long memorizing. The blood on his skin had congealed, forming a thing, insubstantial barrier between the air and Marco's maggot-ridden insides. Except it wasn't Marco, because Marco wasn't there anymore. It was simply half of an empty shell, stinking and rotting in the smoky sunlight.

The stench was disgusting. Jean could see everything where one half of Marco had been torn away, every fleck of fat and torn muscle and cracked bone. He retched. He fell to his knees.

Home is where the heart is, but both Jean's homes were broken and bloody and could never be fixed. And where was Marco's heart now? Inside a titan, slowly digesting? No, not even digesting, just festering or decomposing in a vomit pile, worms crawling through veins and slumbering in chambers. There was nothing left of the love he had once felt for Jean, nothing left of Marco at all. He could see the brain matter that was leaking from the missing side of his head, the mind he'd adored oozing away.

There was no home. Home was safe and sound, and home was forever. But Marco was dead and more than that, Trost had killed him. Jean's sanctuaries were burned and destroyed, and there was nowhere left for him to shelter. His safe place, the place in his mind he went to for happiness, had always been Trost, but how could that continue?

In his mind's eye he saw the slow corruption of his childhood memories. In the corner of it all was Marco, Marco dead and decomposing. He'd always known that one bad memory could undo any good ones, and it was happening now. Instead of being home, Trost would forever be the place where Marco had died.

A dead man was not home. A toxic city who'd taken his love from him, was not home.

At his sides, his hands clenched into fists as he gazed up at the buildings, the sky. If he'd loved Trost once- loved it like he'd loved Marco? Never, he couldn't- that was over. Everything was over.

The walls had crumbled, and the mortar was turned to dust that filled the ventricles of the heart.

Jean would never be home again.

**A/N:**** As always, the ending really got away from me. This is my first time writing in this fandom, as well- and I'm pretty new to it- so here's hoping its all in character.**

**This is being posted pretty late at night and I've never had a beta reader, so feel free to point out any dumb errors.**


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